


so intimately rearranged

by electricshoop



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: "how to spite (eldritch) gods and aggressively refuse to care about their politics" 101, Character Study, Gen, POV Second Person, friendshippy if you don't, platonic or vaguely-non-platonic handholding; entirely depending on how you want to read it, shippy if you want - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 06:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20326435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoop/pseuds/electricshoop
Summary: all things considered, he makes you feel awfully human, sometimes. you kind of like the irony of it.





	so intimately rearranged

**Author's Note:**

> title from "lazy eye" by silversun pickups
> 
> [sorry for any confusion re: answered comments; i'd first posted this work anonymously and under another account and now decided i don't mind having it among my works, now that i'm generally back writing for this fandom anyway. thus, the replies by "anonymous creator"/user "RainyDayAndMeat" are actually My Replies]

so, michael is gone, and then michael is  _ gone, _ and both of these facts are just fine, mostly because you don’t have to deal with them. it’s easy to lose something that doesn’t belong to you.

(although that is, of course, not quite true, because there’s residues, echoes, bouncing around the corridors that are now  _ your _ corridors, and sometimes one of them flies straight at you, and oh, dealing with  _ that _ is tricky.)

realizing that helen is gone (but, not  _ gone, _ of course) is hard, right up until it isn’t, and as soon as it isn’t hard anymore; just a fact, just how things are now, it’s ridiculously easy, and you don’t think you ever–

“do you ever … look back?”

no. you don’t look back, when all you’ll see is a distorted something, a spiral staircase, perhaps, or a door, shut tight, locked tighter.

“i mean …”

he trails off, but you know what he means.  


as soon as it isn’t hard anymore, it’s ridiculously easy, and you never look back, never once looked back, from a certain point on, but–

“sometimes, Archivist, i think a very small part of me will never forgive you for dismissing me the way you did.”

he stares at you.

he stares.

it’s what he does, nowadays.

sometimes, you catch the Archivist’s eye, and just for a second, there’s a thought that doesn’t quite feel like your own –  _ the look in his eyes is so different from the one the other Archivist used to wear, but the sharpness is just the same. _

this is fine; it doesn’t hurt. not  _ your  _ memory; you never knew the Archivist that was before, and michael is gone, and  _ gone, _ so all of this is irrelevant.

(although that is, of course, not quite true, either. and that’s just fine, too, because lies are what  _ you  _ do, nowadays.)

“what … what i did?”

you smile at him. seeing it – Seeing it – must hurt, but he doesn’t look away. admirable effort. fascinating, too, how casually he serves the almighty eye in the sky (helen liked classical music, but you suspect that michael used to be fond of the alan parsons project), barely noticing that he does. that’s always how it goes, though. you think.

“back when it was harder,” you say, explain. you don’t think you’re all that fond of explanations anymore, but he is, and you suppose you can indulge him, just a little.

(a little much, perhaps.)

“i came to you,” you continue, “to talk about it. to tell you we’re quite similar. changing. you yelled. sent me away.”

he understands, remembers, and looks lost for a heartbeat before he shrugs, a little helplessly.

“i didn’t–” he starts, stops, re-starts. “i didn’t know … i didn’t know that i was… was…” he stops, again, doesn’t get the words over his lips.

fair. he makes people talk. he’s not expected to wear his own heart on his sleeve.

still. still looking at you. he’s staring. still. he takes a deep breath, re-re-starts. “i–”

the distinct sound of a tape recorder clicking on. you step over your own personal threshold and pull the door closed; you disappear.

*

it’s a little adorable, how hard he wants to believe that he’s being manipulated by the Spider.

wasn’t there a quote from walter scott? “oh, what a tangled web we weave” – and then there’s a second half of that quote, and isn’t that hilarious?  


*

he knocks, and you open, and he’s holding flowers. you laugh; you can’t help it. he looks all the world like he’s never held a bouquet of flowers before.

he glares a little at you, probably in reaction to your laughing, so you stop.

“flowers, Archivist. really?”

“i…” he stops glaring at you and glares at the flowers instead. “i knew this was stupid,” he mutters, and then says, louder, “look, i, i, i thought about it, and i know i’m not good at this, i never knew how to– how to do this. but you’re right. when you… i shouldn’t have sent you away. i thought it would make an, erm, appropriate apology.”

_ appropriate for what, _ you want to ask, just to see him struggle with social norms some more, but you indulge him (you do that quite often) and take the flowers. your fingers cut through some of the stems and he flinches away from any hint of a touch that could have been there. that, you’re not used to yet, either. he stares at the flowers on the ground and then sighs quietly.

“does that mean you … accept my apology?” he asks. it occurs to you that he might have tried to clumsily apologize to a number of people, recently. it also occurs to you that they might not have been as indulging.

“yes, Archivist,” you say. “it’s alright. it’s only a very small part of me, anyway, and it’s only sometimes.”

he nods.

he looks tired.

“perhaps you should sleep,” you say, without thinking about it, and he shakes his head with a weak laugh.

“that’s not– no, it’s– i’m fine.”

“you’re no good at lies, Archivist,” you say, smile audible through the words. “that would be my territory, i believe.”

“i’m not fine,” he says, almost immediately, surprising you. you hadn’t thought, for some reason, that he’d admit this so readily.

“but,” he continues, “i doubt sleep would help much. i don’t sleep … all that well.”

right.

you sit down, back leaned against the doorframe, and after a moment, he joins you on the floor. you place the flowers in your lap and look at them. you don’t know what kind they are. you think you’d like to know. (you don’t ask, though.)

you don’t ask, you don’t say anything at all, and in the end, it’s him who speaks.

“you never answered my question. not really,” he says. “do you ever look back? do you– do you miss helen?”

you think you appreciate that he asks, but doesn’t Ask, so you answer.

“i don’t,” you say. “i don’t look back, and i don’t miss helen. i don’t think there’s a reason to miss her. i’m still me, just different. i used to be helen, and now i’m helen.”

just like michael, who used to be michael, before it became michael.

he exhales slowly and thinks about that for a bit.

“you say you– you say you’re still helen, but when you say ‘i used to be helen, and now i’m helen’, it still sounds as if you were two different–” (and here he hesitates, just for a second, just long enough for you to catch it) “–persons.”

your turn to think.

maybe he is right with that. lies, after all, are your territory.

(you think that, and then you think about that thought for a while, quietly. he doesn’t interrupt you.)

*

you don’t miss helen.

you think you are helen. helen-just-different. you must still be helen, because he called you an ‘it’, and that bothered you. you don’t think anything changed. nothing beside  _ you, _ that is.

you’re not sure you understand the difference, if there is any; you’re not sure you see the lines, the borders.

all you see is doors; closed and sealed shut forever, and the ones that are yours to bring into existence now.

*

“do you miss yourself?”

he shrugs. he looks tired; still or again. you’re not sure, actually, how much time has passed since you last talked. time isn’t linear, not really, and you warp it, anyway.

“i,” he says, and then shrugs again. “i’m not sure. i think i just, just miss knowing who i am. i know so much now, but…” a soft sigh. “i started calling myself the Archivist when– when recording, and it comes too naturally; it felt different back when  _ everybody else _ called me that, and i don’t– i’m not–”

time passes.

“i think that … maybe i’m just scared,” he says softly, in the end.

“well,” you answer. “that’s rather the point, i believe.”

he laughs.

you didn’t mean it to be a joke, but you like that sound all the same.

*

you don’t like it when the residues-echoes of michael fly straight at you. you don’t like looking at the Archivist (_jon,_ part of you thinks, because you’re still helen, too) and thinking  _ i held his assistant’s hand and told her i wanted to be friends, back before she became something else. _

you don’t like it, because it’s not true. that wasn’t  _ you. _

you don’t like looking at the Archivist and thinking  _ it would have been nice, granting him a soft death, _ because that wasn’t you, either.

you don’t like–

you look at jon, sometimes, and think  _ spending time with him is nice; i’m more fond of him than i think i should be, _ and you don’t like it, because you’re not sure how much of this is residue-echo of michael.

*

_ not as much as i should. _

sometimes you realize, with a suddenness that vaguely hurts a little, that you might not be supposed to indulge him as often as you do. that you might not be supposed to (you hesitate to use this word, because it might be michael’s, but–) like him as much as you do. that what you serve and what he serves are opposites of each other. Seeing and Knowing against Obscuring and Deceiving; truth against lies.

*

you stay away from him for a while.

*

you certainly don’t like staying away from him.

*

“i don’t like staying away from you,” you say, and it’s such a profound truth that something inside of you flinches violently.

he turns to look at you, eyebrows furrowed.

“you– what?” he asks, and then immediately follows it up with, “so you …  _ were _ avoiding me.”

“so you were wondering if i was.”

“why were you avoiding me?”

“michael was very fond of you, Archivist,” you say, and it makes all the sense to you, but judging from his expression, he doesn’t seem to consider this an actual answer to his question. he looks confused, mostly.

you like that.

you’ve had your door here, at the Institute, for a while, and sometimes you believe you can feel the unapproving gaze directed at you. you don’t belong here.

“do you want to go for a walk, Archivist?”

he drops the pile of papers he was holding on his desk and doesn’t hesitate when he says, “yes. please.”

*

nobody pays attention to you while you walk next to each other.

it feels odd. familiar. normal.

_ i held his assistant’s hand, _ the residue-echoes scream at you.  


_ my fingers cut through the flowers he got me, _ you think idly.

nothing happens as you experimentally brush the tips of your fingers against his jacket.

*

“maybe,” you say, “i would miss helen, if i thought about it too much.”

it’s effort, getting the words out. profoundly true, again, in a way you’re not sure you want to admit to even yourself.

he doesn’t look up from his desk (and there’s no indication that he’s surprised you’re suddenly speaking – perhaps he knew (or, Knew) you’ve been standing in his office for almost twenty minutes), but he’s listening, clearly. (he’s not the only one. the click of a tape recorder turning on. you ignore it.)

“i know that i’m not michael, i’ve never been michael, we’re separate people. but sometimes i know what it was like. i know it didn’t like the other Archivist; the one that was before you. and i know that it liked  _ you. _ i know that when it offered to kill you, it genuinely wanted to help; it thought of you very softly.” you hesitate. “i know it didn’t mind being called an ‘it’.”

he nods slowly. “yes,” he says. you’re not sure which part of your little speech he’s affirming, but it makes you smile.

“i’m not an ‘it’, i know that. and i know i like being called helen. i know i’ve changed, but the difference doesn’t seem to matter much, most of the time. not anymore.”

he laughs quietly, the sound void of any humor. “and you think it might be easier for me if– if i just–”

“embraced what you are, yes,” you say. “perhaps the difference wouldn’t matter much to you, most of the time, either, that way. perhaps, Archivist, you just think too much.”

“perhaps,” he agrees after a few seconds. “but that’s rather the point, i believe.”

_ ah. _

you laugh, and he turns to smile at you.

*

he likes the quiet, he says. no Knowing, here. not inside your corridors. you watch him for a while (ironic, that), sat on the floor, with his eyes closed and his back to the wall. it doesn’t seem to bother him that the angles don’t line up quite right, or perhaps he doesn’t notice (no Knowing, here).  


you sit down next to him, very close, and you think of michael. you don’t look back, but a softly messy mixture of what used to be its thoughts swim inside your head anyway.

wasn’t there a quote from walter scott? there’s a first half of the quote, and then – “when we practice to deceive.”

…and by god, isn’t it hilarious?  


for a few moments, you are again acutely aware of how different the two of you are, on multiple levels. for a few moments, all you can think about is the Distortion and the Beholding.

then you think about (the Archivist and yourself) jon and helen.

he doesn’t move when you gently put your hand on his; he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull back, doesn’t even open his eyes, he just slowly turns his hand to intertwine his fingers with yours, and they feel human to you, both his and yours.

helen–  _ you  _ liked books, and nice quotes. you were never that interested in politics, you don’t think.  


you don’t think you are now.  


you gently squeeze his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> will i ever stop lowkey shipping jon/Spiral and rambling about it in three different versions of the same ridiculously messy fic? unlikely!


End file.
